Various means have been used in the prior art to defeat heavily armored vehicles such as tanks or personnel carriers. In the past this was frequently accomplished with direct line-of-sight weapons or wire guided rockets. One of the problems with aforementioned weapons was that the projectile was limited in leathality because it had to be fired into the front, side or rear of the target which normally were the hardest armored areas. These hard armored areas generally included some means for countering direct line-of-fire projectiles.
Another problem with prior art guided systems which require either optical or visual tracking of the target until impact, or illumination of the target by an observer until target impact, is that the probability of hit can be severely reduced by smoke, obscuration and/or loss of line-of-sight. In addition visual tracking and target illumination generally allowed enemy detection and the danger of counterfire and/or countermeasures. A further problem with the prior art devices was that targets could not be successfully attacked in defilade or when obscured from visual observation during flight. Another problem with guided prior art weapon systems was that they are very costly to manufacture because of the complex guidance systems required to obtain pinpoint accuracy.
In addition those projectiles which utilized proximity type fuzes to set off a warhead were frequently ineffective against the sensed target because the warhead fragment cloud was distributed in a 360.degree. pattern rather than being concentrated in a single direction toward the target.